Pirelli World Challenge

[Bcarr6]

Originally Posted by TheMightyM

I thought SRO was suppose to be the solution…

Can't deny SRO have made a success of every series they run.

Blancpain GT is on fire, British GT is pretty solid, they improved GT4 euro in their first year of management, the gentleman based GT Sports Club is running very respectable grids.

However, this seems to have been a slightly blunt way of stamping their control over PWC and I think it was too much. Especially as Gill didn't seem to be expecting it.

On Sprint X, the format works well in Europe, but I love the standard single driver format for the PWC. I find it a little silly to then have a same length race for two drivers in the same series. If Sprint X became 2-3 hour mini enduro, it'd be more understandable.

But, that does go against their purely sprint formula and run them into IMSA territory a little


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[joeb]

Originally Posted by Bcarr6

On Sprint X, the format works well in Europe, but I love the standard single driver format for the PWC. I find it a little silly to then have a same length race for two drivers in the same series. If Sprint X became 2-3 hour mini enduro, it'd be more understandable.

But, that does go against their purely sprint formula and run them into IMSA territory a little

I have to agree with you on this one. The Sprint X needs to be at least 90 minutes, 100 minutes would be great too (if they don't want mini enduros). That way each driver could basically do a sprint race and you get the result at the end.

[nasportscar]

Originally Posted by MoMedic9019

I'm sure they aren't. But, from an exposure standpoint, they need help...

That's why they partner w/ Indycar

[Speed-King]

Originally Posted by joeb

I have to agree with you on this one. The Sprint X needs to be at least 90 minutes, 100 minutes would be great too (if they don't want mini enduros). That way each driver could basically do a sprint race and you get the result at the end.

GT3s need refueling to do a 100 minute race, adding lots of cost for the teams. I think the most you can realistically do with a "sprint-setup" in terms of crew and equipment requirements is 70 minutes.

I don't think the 60 minute two driver races are too much of a problem, but they either need to be standard across the full season or reserved for a smaller number of stand-out events - no more than two or three vs six or seven regular sprint races.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by Speed-King

GT3s need refueling to do a 100 minute race, adding lots of cost for the teams. I think the most you can realistically do with a "sprint-setup" in terms of crew and equipment requirements is 70 minutes.

I don't think the 60 minute two driver races are too much of a problem, but they either need to be standard across the full season or reserved for a smaller number of stand-out events - no more than two or three vs six or seven regular sprint races.

Yes in my example refueling would have been part of the driver change pit stop along with a new set of tires

Edit: on top of that I suppose you could mandate a pit-stop length so that you can get away with one person doing the fueling and another person doing tires.

[WolfsburgRS]

I'm pretty excited for a VIR date. I do think having Sprint and Sprint-X on the same weekend seems kind of odd, as I still don't really get the point of Sprint-X in general.

[MoMedic9019]

Originally Posted by nasportscar

That's why they partner w/ Indycar

And that is why they need to avoid standalone weekends....I think if SRO/PWC would find a way to boost the TV coverage, it would help immensly.

[nasportscar]

Originally Posted by MoMedic9019

And that is why they need to avoid standalone weekends....I think if SRO/PWC would find a way to boost the TV coverage, it would help immensly.

A few standalone events are fine. COTA this year had a great turn out, Road America last year was pretty good, Mosport this year was great as well. If they pick their locations right, I'm a fan of standalone. 3 rounds is probably perfect, 5 is probably the max right now. The TV needs to get better, but they are locked into their current contract now. Luckily the stream is good.

[Nick Woodbury]

Originally Posted by nasportscar

A few standalone events are fine. COTA this year had a great turn out, Road America last year was pretty good, Mosport this year was great as well. If they pick their locations right, I'm a fan of standalone. 3 rounds is probably perfect, 5 is probably the max right now. The TV needs to get better, but they are locked into their current contract now. Luckily the stream is good.

Lime Rock Was also a fantastically attended race for that standalone event.

[Coach Ep]

I think the point is having both the sprint and the Sprint X races on the stand alone events. I agree that doesn't make sense.

I also share the sentiment that over time the Sprint X version (1 hour races with mandatory pitstop) will become the norm, which means PWC is stepping away from their historical race duration setting (50 mins without a pitstop). Not sure if that's a clever move.

[nasportscar]

@nick, true, I forgot about Lime Rock, that too was a good turnout for the short weekend.

[TRspitfirefan]

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/a...-a-compromise/

.....A return to COTA for the WEC, however, appears to be likely, potentially with Pirelli World Challenge, which moved its event to Sept. 1-3. from its traditional season-opener in March.

It's pretty much all pure speculation at this point, but I think a PWC/WEC shared event would be incredible!

[jjvincent]

A PWC/WEC weekend would be a disaster. If PWC goes with this and doing it in September, better start looking for another series to follow because they will kill it with those kind of management decisions.

I think that PWC leaked this info on the schedule because they knew IMSA was going to announce theirs. Since IMSA for once did a good job, it really makes PWC look pretty bad at the moment.

[nasportscar]

Originally Posted by jjvincent

A PWC/WEC weekend would be a disaster. If PWC goes with this and doing it in September, better start looking for another series to follow because they will kill it with those kind of management decisions.

I think that PWC leaked this info on the schedule because they knew IMSA was going to announce theirs. Since IMSA for once did a good job, it really makes PWC look pretty bad at the moment.

Per PWC, WEC is really hard to work with, but I'm not sure they would have much choice if WEC and COTA wanted that weekend

[schmidder]

Originally Posted by jjvincent

A PWC/WEC weekend would be a disaster. If PWC goes with this and doing it in September, better start looking for another series to follow because they will kill it with those kind of management decisions.

I think that PWC leaked this info on the schedule because they knew IMSA was going to announce theirs. Since IMSA for once did a good job, it really makes PWC look pretty bad at the moment.

Why would this be a disaster?

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[jjvincent]

WEC is a big show that comes to town and nobody knows it's there. The only coverage they get is when they interview local boy Ed Brown on the morning news. They literally bring nothing to the table that becomes a benefit for PWC. All they want is for them to be a priority at the track and act like that they are so important, that anyone else that runs with them are third class. I can understand if WEC was bringing in a packed house but they are not. Then with WEC being persistent on running during football season shows that they are clueless about this market.

If PWC had half a brain, they'd go back to the March date and do it alone. Run two races for GT, GTS and TC. Start on Friday afternoon and end on Sunday. There's no reason why you can't run two practice sessions, qualifying and two races over 2.5 days. Run with WEC, then they get the majority of Friday and Saturday. That stretches out the PWC schedule to a forced promoter test day (now you will only have one official practice) that will have teams there from Wednesday morning to Sunday afternoon.

Then promote it locally with a bunch of the Americans that run in the series. Don't do it the way the WEC does it where they take some promo shots at the track with them wearing a cowboy hat. That would be like when all of the American teams go to LeMans, they all walk around wearing a Beret and chowing down on a Crepe, because that's French.

Only reason I can see why they would consider running with the WEC is because of money. PWC pays less for track rental at the cost of the teams getting treated worse for an event nobody will see. At that point it would be better to rent out MSR and do the event there.

[Bcarr6]

Originally Posted by jjvincent

WEC is a big show that comes to town and nobody knows it's there. The only coverage they get is when they interview local boy Ed Brown on the morning news. They literally bring nothing to the table that becomes a benefit for PWC. All they want is for them to be a priority at the track and act like that they are so important, that anyone else that runs with them are third class. I can understand if WEC was bringing in a packed house but they are not. Then with WEC being persistent on running during football season shows that they are clueless about this market.

If PWC had half a brain, they'd go back to the March date and do it alone. Run two races for GT, GTS and TC. Start on Friday afternoon and end on Sunday. There's no reason why you can't run two practice sessions, qualifying and two races over 2.5 days. Run with WEC, then they get the majority of Friday and Saturday. That stretches out the PWC schedule to a forced promoter test day (now you will only have one official practice) that will have teams there from Wednesday morning to Sunday afternoon.

Then promote it locally with a bunch of the Americans that run in the series. Don't do it the way the WEC does it where they take some promo shots at the track with them wearing a cowboy hat. That would be like when all of the American teams go to LeMans, they all walk around wearing a Beret and chowing down on a Crepe, because that's French.

Only reason I can see why they would consider running with the WEC is because of money. PWC pays less for track rental at the cost of the teams getting treated worse for an event nobody will see. At that point it would be better to rent out MSR and do the event there.

WEC attendance figures are big time in Europe and Japan, COTA seems to be a sole struggle for them

Not sure on attendance for the other fly always like China and Bahrain etc

And we will see in Mexico, but generally Silverstone, Spa, Le Mans, and Nurburgring all have very respectable attendance and viewership


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[jjvincent]

WEC gets huge attendance and viewership. Problem is, it doesn't happen at COTA. NASCAR gets huge attendance and viewership but I have a feeling it would not if they ran a race in Europe.

When Grand-AM ran there the first time, there were a pretty good amount of people at the track (not a massive amount but not bad). WEC shows up and if there are 10K people that attend the race, that would be an ambitious number. From just by the being there and looking at the attendance, PWC out draws the people over who hang around to watch that WEC 6 hour race.

If WEC had half a brain, they would just go to an event that has a built in audience which will even show up for a club race (i.e. Road America, Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, Laguna or Lime Rock). You could have a lawn mower race at Lime Rock and the place would be 50% full just to watch them go at it. Honestly, I think there are more people when it comes to support, crew and drivers in WEC as opposed to spectators that pay money to watch them race at COTA. That's because everyone is watching football and I know this will come to everyone as a shocker but American football has a much bigger following here in the US as opposed to all sportscar racing in the US. No reason to compete against it especially when Texas is fanatical over football.

[TF110]

The cota event is run when it is due to logistics. Unless they switch to a winter series, there's no way to get the race in at a time where there's no conflicting sporting events. August would be nice, but even late August has college football. Would it be better at Road America at the same time of year?

[TheMightyM]

[QUOTE=TF110;3664034]The cota event is run when it is due to logistics. Unless they switch to a winter series, there's no way to get the race in at a time where there's no conflicting sporting events. August would be nice, but even late August has college football. /QUOTE]

This is not true. There's exactly one top-division college football game in August this year — Hawaii vs. California on Friday, Aug. 26th, and that game is being played in Sydney, Australia. After that, there are a bunch of games on Thursday, Sept. 1. So having the COTA date in late August would be a huge improvement over (say) having it over a holiday weekend with a home football game in town. If the WEC can’t manage to do that, perhaps it should go to a place where, in the U.S. or otherwise, where it can draw a crowd, if drawing a crowd really matters that much to it.

[jjvincent]

Why can't you just put the date back to what it has been for the last few years? One thing PWC needs to learn is to have consistency. Not changing the dates of events, messing with race lengths, number of events, number of races, who gets to run with who etc.

One thing I have learned over the years, when you find something that works, just keep it consistent. Don't start changing major things because it seems like a good idea at the time. Do small ones to make the product better and don't get into some battle with IMSA when it comes to PR announcements. Do your own thing and make it different enough that people that it will please a larger group of rich older white guys instead of them making a decision of one or another (i.e. one a Sprint series and another an enduro).

[JLGarcia]

Originally Posted by jjvincent

If WEC had half a brain, they would just go to an event that has a built in audience which will even show up for a club race (i.e. Road America, Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, Laguna or Lime Rock). You could have a lawn mower race at Lime Rock and the place would be 50% full just to watch them go at it.

I for one would be roughly 275% more interested in a WEC event at Lime Rock than I am the current COTA race. If nothing else, the forum/Twitter meltdowns would be second-to-none.

[Bcarr6]

The U.S. is for obvious reasons an important market for WEC and the big LMP1 boys, but is COTA really the right option. The only real excitement that race has had was caused by a crazy heavy rain shower.

The track is too sterile and spacious. No character. I like the Esses and that is about it.

Now a WEC race at Road Am would be fun


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[TF110]

[QUOTE=TheMightyM;3664038]

Originally Posted by TF110

The cota event is run when it is due to logistics. Unless they switch to a winter series, there's no way to get the race in at a time where there's no conflicting sporting events. August would be nice, but even late August has college football. /QUOTE]

This is not true. There's exactly one top-division college football game in August this year — Hawaii vs. California on Friday, Aug. 26th, and that game is being played in Sydney, Australia. After that, there are a bunch of games on Thursday, Sept. 1. So having the COTA date in late August would be a huge improvement over (say) having it over a holiday weekend with a home football game in town. If the WEC can’t manage to do that, perhaps it should go to a place where, in the U.S. or otherwise, where it can draw a crowd, if drawing a crowd really matters that much to it.

That's this year. And usually late August is college ball. The wec gives about 5-6 weeks between Europe and another continent. That's the beginning of September. Then you're up against the opening NFL weekend.

[Matt]

Originally Posted by JLGarcia

I for one would be roughly 275% more interested in a WEC event at Lime Rock than I am the current COTA race. If nothing else, the forum/Twitter meltdowns would be second-to-none.

Yes!


I'd absolutely attend, I'm curious if a P1 car could break the 40 second barrier.

ALMS ran 37 cars around LRP one year, so the 32 or whatever WEC has wouldn't be an issue.